'I uncovered a lot of stuff I can't put in the book,' author says.

John McCain's campaign is lashing out at a shocking new report (first revealed here on Monday) of his red-faced, expletive-laden tirade aimed at his wife. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post reveals another nugget from Cliff Schecter's new book The Real McCain, which details a physical confrontation between McCain and another congressman.

Perhaps the most remarkable story of McCain's temper involved Arizona CongressmanRick Renzi. Two former reporters covering McCain, one who witnessed the following events and one who confirmed the facts provided by the first, relayed it to me as follows: In 2006, the Arizona Republican congressional delegation had a strategy meeting. McCain repeatedly addressed two new members, congressmen Trent Franks and Rick Renzi, as 'boy.' Finally, Renzi, a former college linebacker, rose from his chair and said to McCain, "You call me that one more time and I'll kick your old ass."

McCain lunged at Renzi, punches were thrown, and the two had to be physically separated. After they went to their separate offices, McCain called Renzi and demanded an apology. Renzi refused. Apparently this posture made McCain admire him, as they became fast friends.

Also included in the book is an anecdote from a 1992 campaign stop, relayed to the author by three sources. McCain's wife Cindy teased him about this thinning hair at which point he lashed out, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."

RAW STORY called McCain's campaign for comment before revealing the anecdote Monday morning. No one ever called back, but the campaign has seen fit to decry Schecter's reporting in an interview with a New York gossip column.

The campaign has not yet weighed in on the report of his scuffle with Renzi.
Schecter responded to the accusation on his blog.

No surprise here. It's far from the first time the "maverick" has made himself into a liar, and today's opening statement to General Petaeus once again showed it won't be the last. ...

I have hit McCain with a bit of that old straight-talk. Instead of lying about me because of it, he should try it sometime. How about starting today when we are trying to find a solution to this disaster he helped create in Mesopotamia.

Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein notes that the book's new reports on McCains fiery temper are well supported by other accounts of his losing his cool.

Anecdotes like these would stand out as highly abnormal if it weren't for McCain's history of similarly explosive behavior. As Washingtonian magazine documented (and Schecter notes in the book), McCain once "scuffled" with the Senate's then oldest member, Strom Thurmond, during a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing in January 1995. Three years later, the Associated Press article reported that McCain dropped F-Bombs on at least three fellow Republicans.

"I'm calling you a f------ jerk!" he once retorted to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.

And in a opinion piece last year on Salon.com, Sidney Blumenthal, now an adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton, wrote that McCain once told Sen. Ted Kennedy to "shut up" on the Senate Floor, referred to a fellow Republican as a "shit head" and offered a downright vicious and doubly-offensive joke in 1998 Republican fundraiser about then first daughter Chelsea Clinton.

"Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly?" he asked. "Because Janet Reno is her father."

The anecdote in The Real McCain about the candidate's tirade towards his wife was confirmed to Schecter by three Arizona reporters, who had been covering the candidate at the time. He told RAW STORY Monday he was fully confident in the story's accuracy and wouldn't have included it otherwise.

Latest Comments

rebellb
I think Charles Manson and the Manson "Family" were a fascist conspiracy to make the hippies look bad. I suspect Manson himself was programmed. He had been in various prisons, where a lot of brainwashing occurs. While he likely learned mind control techniques there, he was also subjected to them. The film industry is involved in a lot of propaganda to get people to go along with the system. The Spahn Ranch was likely used in many of the Westerns that glorified the genocide of the Native Americans and programmed the minds of many people. Many people who got caught up in the Manson cult were vulnerable and naive people who were looking to escape the authoritarianism of their bourgeois families, but instead got taken in by this brainwashed brainwasher who pretended to be a hippie. The Spahn Ranch likely contained a lot of triggers that might have been used in programming the members of the Manson "Family".

Lyle Courtsal
This guy is not a Christian if he is sending vulnerable people to a stateless person status. A lot of rightwingers who think they're Christians ain't going to make. Remember, thou shalt not kill, by gun or budget cut.

Hank
Oh and further evidence of his being an agent provocateur is quoting an anti-pope of the new Vatican II pseudo-Christianity. It's pretty clear after the Judaeo-Masonic takeover of the Catholic Church with Vatican II that this fully controlled religious entity is being made to be the One World Religion of ecumenism, do as thou wilt and other satanic creeds. SHAME ON CONSTANTINE. I only need use the words of Archangel Michael: Lord rebuke you, alex constantine.

Lyle Courtsal
And I forgot about Luke Elliott Sommer and friends who exposed 65 torture centers mostly in Afghanistan. He came home and exposed them, then he and his associates did a bank job for running money. What most people don't understand is that once you violate a clearance, then they start gunning for you. They ran to Canada and then turned themselves in. Then of course there was the talk about how Sommer was going to use the money to start in the canadian ganja businessl weird how it was that when I posted additional information on wikipedia, it would vanish off the site in about a second. Type it in again and once again, the good stuff on the torture centers would vanish, but the garbage about the canadian pot business would still be there. Weird. . .